


Where the River Narrows

by signalbeam



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Character Study, Extinction, Gen, Mind Control, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 22:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with ghosts is that they never learn from their mistakes. </p><p>After the game, the future of the troll race is looking dodgy. Kanaya goes to the afterlife to get help, and ends up with an armful of pirate douchebags.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Aradia came to visit her down in the caves once every week, and always with presents. Today she brought more ghosts and a few of the humanoid natives for food. One of them was alive, for Kanaya. Mother grubs were scavengers, and did not mind mouthfuls of putrefying meat. 

“I think this is good for them,” Aradia said. She was talking about the ghosts. 

“They’re a nuisance,” Kanaya said, crossing her arms. The guardian ghosts had been Aradia’s idea, something to keep Kanaya from being trapped down in the caves all day long. All the ghosts did was frighten away the locals, no help in the care and tending of the helpless grub, fat and grotesque as a tumor, legs sticking out of her at all angles. When she was hungry she'd cry, piercing and awful needles pushed through the ears, and every time the ghosts would swirl around her in distress, making helpless _whoo whoo whooooooooo_ sounds to comfort her. All it ever did was make the grub cry more. The problem with ghosts was that they never learned. “You will have to teach your ghosts salvation through other means.” 

Aradia frowned. She beat her wings, and gave off fairy dust. 

“Stop that,” Kanaya said. They were far down in the belly of the cave, where water dripped down from the ceiling in lime-ringed pools. The only light came from the fungal bulbs, growing like shelves from the walls. It gave her unpleasant memories of the meteor. 

“Sorry,” Aradia said with a little shrug. She shook a few ghosts off of her arm and sent them to the cave’s entrance. “Do they make good conversation at least?” 

“They speak?” 

“Of course they do.” 

“I’ve never heard them.” When Aradia looked worried, Kanaya held her arms out stiff, turned on her glow, and said, “Whoooooo. Awoooo. Whoo.” Then she let her arms drop, and tried to get her fangs back into her mouth. 

“I forgot that you aren’t dead enough to hear them,” Aradia said with a sigh. “Well, I guess we’ll have to hope for Jade to make those robots. I don’t think she’s having much luck there, though.”

“No.” In the new world, Jade devoted herself to botany and civil engineering, with a side of nuclear weapon development, transdimensional transportation, and frog biology, and on the side of that side, robot development. But Rose, with boundless sensitivity, had blocked in special intensive dog therapy for her. Jade now went into hiding anytime she saw the sun or light brighter than a forty watt bulb. 

Yes, Rose was doing well for herself these days. 

“When was the last time you left the caves?” Aradia said. “And for how long?” 

“Two days ago. To cut wood for a fire. It was chilly.” 

“You really shouldn’t be down here so long. One of these days you’re going to wake up all, ‘grr, I’m Kanaya and I’m going on a chainsaw massacre, grr. I’m overwhelmed by bloodthirst and—’” 

“I don’t sound like that,” she snapped. But in truth, Aradia had gotten the growl just right. 

“Isn’t there anyone who can take your spot for a few weeks?” Aradia’s face scrunched in thought as they both ran through the list of current survivors. At last, she said, “Terezi?” 

“No.” Terezi had been blacklisted early on for trying to lick the grub. Kanaya had read things in Rose’s library about traumatic memories resurfacing in adulthood. “It’s fine,” she said. “I can do without sunlight or company until Jade finishes the droids, for as many sweeps as that takes.” 

“Wow,” Aradia said, unimpressed. “Well, it’s your duty to be here. We both know you won’t leave.” 

There was something offensive about the way Aradia treated the future so casually, someplace to be visited during the dull hours of the day when no one was being murdered instead of what it was to her: a massive wall of darkness always encroaching, light flickering like alarmed, electric cats, quick to appear and quick to spring away before anything could be resolved. “Sometimes I forget that free will is a thing in this new world,” she said. “It can be very difficult, with the way you prognosticate every other sentence.” 

Aradia shrugged. Even her shoulders gave off flecks of fairy dust, like she was made of chalk. “I think I might have something that can help. Go sit on the fabricpile, okay?” 

“What are you planning?” Kanaya said, even as she sat. 

“Don’t worry! It’ll be fun,” Aradia said, giving her two ‘thumb up’s. A human thing. Even the psychopomps were not immune to their strange hand gestures. Aradia bent down and picked up a rock, and then walked behind Kanaya—before Kanaya could turn and ask what she was planning on doing, the back of her head exploded, throwing her deep into an inky sea. She fell through the bottom of the sea and into a boat in a rocky channel. 

She had never dreamed of ships before, unless the clouds of Prospit showed her Feferi or Eridan, or Gamzee on the shores. Vriska at sea, sometimes clinging to the mast of her ship in terror, only three hundred feet from shore, or recessed in herself in thought while sitting at the top of the masts. The black rocks in these golden dreams were salt striped, and Vriska’s ship always glided in front of the rocks, steady and thoughtless as a dream. A dream of a dream in a vision; it only seemed strange once they had pushed and clawed their way out of the game. 

Aradia was in the boat, too, sitting in front of her and leaning forward with her hands on her knees. They were so close that Kanaya could feel the heat of Aradia’s fingers on her own knees, through the fabric of her skirt. 

“Hi!” Aradia said. “How are you holding up?” 

“Excuse me? Did you kill me?” Kanaya said, immediately patting her head for any new holes. She had the eerie, dreamy echo of a headache, from far away. 

“Oh, no. I just needed to knock you out. Sorry, I know you don’t need to sleep as much these days, and I wanted to show you it right away. You’re just dead enough to come in. Then again, we’re not that discriminating with who can come in. Just about who can go back. I can give you this boat, at least until you’re out of the caves. You can come here any time you sleep.” 

“That’s—I’m not sure how this could be considered an improvement,” she said. But just as she said it, the darkness around her grew light, and the cave crumbled around them. The river below was milky green, the sky orange and sunless. Behind them was nothing but more sea and more water, and ahead was a town made of black wood. 

“Welcome,” Aradia said, “to the underworld.”

*** 

The boat Aradia gave her appeared in the real world as a necklace, a thin black iron chain with a golden hourglass, half-full. 

“When you want to use it, flip it over so all the sand’s on top,” she said. “And then go into your pile and fall asleep. I’ll show up and bop you on the head and there you’ll be! I’m just joking about the hitting you on the head part.” 

Aradia left not too long after that. She insisted that Kanaya kiss her on both cheeks before she left. It was a tradition in some places in the underworld, she insisted. Kanaya, not convinced, gave two peckish kisses to each one of Aradia’s warm cheeks. Much to her surprise, Aradia returned the kisses not after, but as. She suppressed the urge to touch her face and turn aside. It wouldn’t matter, she told herself, because it had been to both sides—still she blushed. 

“No one over there made me do that,” she said. They had been varying degrees of intimidated by her. Welcoming, until they saw her eyes. 

Aradia’s smile was toothless, but shone with a sly, wet light along the bottom lip. “It’s a friends-only thing.” 

And then Kanaya was alone again in the cave. Everything irritated her: the dripping water, the splashing pools, that fucking grub. Compared to this, being dead was a wholesome and soothing experience, with boundless possibilities for _something_. People. Places. Something that wasn’t this cave. Something that wasn’t the troll-human settlement, that beach Rose liked, the ghost-filled valley. Something. 

So the next night she turned the hourglass over, went to her fabricpile to rest, and faded away. 

When she opened her eyes, she was in the same bed in the same inn she had fallen asleep in. She had no idea how long it had been since she had last been here besides a grogginess in her body, and a vague, tightening pulse in the back of her head, from Aradia’s brick the day before. Aradia had given her a purse full of ghost money—useless, because anyone could make more of it with enough thought, but ghosts used it nonetheless—and paid for the night, for whatever that meant down here. 

She went down to the front to pay for the room, but the troll only gave her a dark look. 

“So what are you?” he said. “Alive or dead or what?” 

“Excuse me,” Kanaya said. 

“I knew the second you came that shit would come raining down, and what do we hear the day after you come in? The pirates have scheduled a visit! Get out of my inn. Find somewhere else.” 

“I have money,” she said, in lieu of whipping out her chainsaw and cutting him in half. She wasn’t sure how to kill a ghost, and she disliked thinking when she was killing things. 

“Yeah, me too,” said the ghost, waving his hand. A pitiful pile of cash appeared on the counter. “I let fairy girl’s toothless moirail stay here, but you’re not in a quadrant, and you’re worse luck than him. Shoo.” 

“Fine,” Kanaya said. She prepared to storm back upstairs to her room to fetch her bags and do away with the soap and shampoo, but then remembered she had come to this world with nothing but her clothes and chainsaw. She settled for glaring, an effect with limited effectiveness when she wasn’t sure if the troll was making eye contact with her or if he was focusing on the tiny dragon he was crafting out of the cash he made. 

The town was narrow and wooden, trollish in design, but not in material. The wood smelled damp and faintly moldy as she walked down the streets and towards the market. But with no need to eat and few goods that couldn’t be materialized with some mental effort, the market was more like a circus, and eventually found someone willing to give her some food, a squirming alien species from the far reaches of the empire. It was small and squishy, and had six eyes instead of two or eight. When she bit down, the blood inside was colorless and unsatisfying. 

“Don’t blame the cook,” said the troll who made it for her. “So what are you doing here, stranger?” 

“See-sighting.”

“You picked as good a time as any. They say the pirates are going to come.” 

“Who are these pirates?” Kanaya said. “You mean Vriska?” 

“Who?” 

“One horn hooked. Other horn forked. Blueblood, long hair. Found a cache of surplus letters as a grub and regurgitates as many as she can at eeeeeeeeverrrrrrrry opportunity?” 

“They always kill us before we ask any questions.” 

Kanaya sawed off the alien’s tongue and chewed on it for a while. Then she said, “I don’t see how you can get much deader.” 

At that moment the lighthouse caught fire. Someone from far away screamed, “They’re here!” and everyone in the marketplace vanished, disappeared in a flash of white smoke. Then the smoke cleared, and there was nothing but the empty stalls and baskets. A black ship emerged on the horizon, flying a blue flag. As the ship drew closer to the town, she saw, standing at the bow, a woman with mismatched horns and a billowing, black coat. 

***

First the pirates stormed out of the ship and into town. Then they set everything on fire. They found her still sitting in the marketplace, still chewing on the ghost alien. She sawed a few of them in two, but they had the advantage of sheer numbers, and could regenerate their limbs and lower bodies, besides. 

They blindfolded her, bound her hands behind her with coarse, wet rope, and made a big show of cheering. 

“This is ridiculous,” Kanaya huffed. “They can repair the damage in a matter of hours. This destruction is gratuitous.” A second later her mouth was stuffed with what she suspected was someone’s bandana. 

They led her up the ship. This was just like Vriska, Kanaya thought, to make a big wasteful show of the capture and the burning; she could smell the flames from here. All around her she could hear the cries of pirates bringing things aboard the ship, cheering and screaming. From the sounds of it, they had rematerialized some of the town residents, and were now tying them up and skewering them; the oddest thing was how the townspeople cried in pain, as though it mattered if they had been stabbed—unless they were being stabbed, gushing ghostly plasma blood onto the floor. 

Someone pressed a knife to her back. She stiffened by instinct, then tried to snarl. There was the usual coolness in her abdomen, then the heat of her skin, giving off light. One of the pirates holding her yelped and released her arms. Someone else shouted, “Clock her!” She ducked by instinct; something wooden connected with the back of her neck, and then hit her shoulder. Someone grabbed her by the horns and yanked her backwards. She felt steel against her throat, cool as river water. 

“Nngh,” said a troll, and let her go. They yanked her to a flight of stairs, then to a door. 

“Yes!” said someone inside. “Come in.” The voice was clear and cheery. Kanaya frowned; she felt her eyebrows bristle across the blindfold. 

They walked her into the room. It felt large, spacious, and smelled of dust. They made her kneel at a carpet; someone walked to her, heels clicking. It had to be Vriska—but Vriska never clicked towards anything, only stomped. Someone touched her jaw, ran their fingers along the curve of her horns. 

“Wait! Wait. I know this one. Umm. Everyone out now. Go, go!” Shoes and boots struck the floor, became fainter, then disappeared with the shutting of a door. The woman tapped Kanaya’s lip to get her to open her mouth, and removed the gag. Then she took off the blindfold. 

It was Aranea, though at first her eyes refused to process this. She and Vriska had a similar face, nearly identical in build, the same horns, the same wildness in the hair. But gradually her eyes adjusted to the sight of this woman in the pirate’s coat and the aggressive, pointed hat. The unframed white eyes, blank and expressive only in their shape. She shook her head, trying to clear it, but she saw flashes of the green sea through the windows, the rich, dark wood, the brilliant red carpet below her feet. Everything she saw only confused her more. 

“Umm,” Aranea said. “Hmm. Hello. Let me get you out of those.” 

She slipped behind Kanaya, to cut the ropes. Free, Kanaya stumbled forward, arms spreading out to her sides as though in flight. 

*** 

The captain’s cabin stretched the full width of the ship, with magnificent windows and gaudy curtains. There were rare suits of armor lining the walls, each suit of armor armed with some rare and exotic weapon and shield. Some of the suits of armors even wore cloaks and dresses. They were the tackiest mannequin set Kanaya had ever seen. 

Behind a wooden panel was an actual desk, bolted to the floor. Then, off to the side behind another panel, was a bed. Aranea had Kanaya sit on it while she stood by the window, hands behind her back and narrated the whole tale of her turn to piracy: reliving the Mindfang life, getting in touch with adventure, something about the soothing rock of the boat, a sea without storms. It went on for so long that Kanaya, on the soft bed and absurdly high thread-count sheets, began to nod off. Each dip forward of her head sent flashes of another set of fabric on her skin, the doubled sensation of being asleep in two places at once. 

Aranea cleared her throat, and Kanaya scrambled with the length of her legs and arms to push herself into a more awake position. She did her best to not look sheepish. 

“But I can see,” Aranea said, “that I’ve gone on for a while.” 

Kanaya blinked at her, scrambling to remember what Aranea had said. She couldn’t remember the specifics, only a general outline of it. Something about boredom and then a ship and raiding towns for fun and profit. The usual spiel, only with added squids and a few too many swordfights. “I don’t understand the point in this lifestyle. Everyone is already dead. They are not going to become any deader. And your theft of objects means nothing when they can simply think more of them.” 

“Hmm,” Aranea said. “That is a valid criticism of the pirate’s life! But by the same logic, we can ask ourselves what the point of retaining our current forms and memories when there’s no point in it. Some of the ghosts do that,” she said, with a touch of pragmatic consideration. “They give up and disappear. If there are no consequences for anything, then why do anything? This way we have the chance to play it out. It isn’t the same, but it comes close enough to mattering. Why, as I see it, I’m providing them with a little carpe diem. It can be hard taking the role of a villain, but c’est la vie.” 

Kanaya felt a tugging sensation, first in her head, then slowly throughout the rest of her body. She tried to blink, but her eyelids were closing on one side, opening on the other. She could see the pattern of the cave walls on the back of her eyelids. “I have to go,” she said. 

“Do you?” Aranea said, sounding disappointed. “Wait! You never told me how you got here. You’re still alive on the other side. How did you do it?” 

“I need a bed.” 

“Oh, you can take mine. It’s not as though I need it for anything.” 

Her whole body was overcome with a wild, rampaging dizziness. She tried to protest against this, the bed, not the tiredness—sleeping here and waking up there was an inevitability. Her knees were weakening, and Aranea was pouring that cool libation over her mind again. The back of her thighs hit the bed. She breathed in, smelling wood and dusty sheets. 

Then she breathed in and smelled moss. Dank waters, the squeaky cry of the mother grub, longing for companionship. Her skin still glowed. She shut it off, suddenly moody. The golden chain around her throat had gained heat from the light of her skin, and now rested too warm along her neck.


	2. Chapter 2

Twice a month, Rose visited, either out of duty or novelty. She used to make the journey on foot, but in recent perigees, had shifted to flight. Sometimes she brought Karkat or Terezi with her. More often she came alone, emerging at the mouth of the cave in midday. She always hovered at the entrance of the cave, as though uncertain whether she should proceed. What Rose didn’t know was that Kanaya could smell her pacing there, warmblooded and kicking up dirt. 

When she finally came in, Kanaya had just set the mother grub to bed. Rose had brought a potted plant. It bore a crude resemblance to a tree. It was artless in appearance and unpleasant to behold. 

“It’ll die,” Kanaya said once the pot was in her hands. “Because of the ghosts.” 

“Drat,” Rose said. “How could I have not accounted for the effect of the supernatural, when anyone else would have said that the lack of sun would have killed it instead?” 

“I didn’t mean it sarcastically,” Kanaya said, uncomfortable. She put the pot on a raised rock, and stared deep into the dense green mess. When she looked back up, Rose was standing in front of her, arms dangling limp at her side. She had cut her hair again, higher and closer to her head. She looked more like Dave than ever. “Yes?” she said belatedly. 

“I was just thinking that you could come with me to the town for a few days,” she said, her smile crooked and earnest. “Jade’s almost finished with the first proto-prototype robot. It’ll be nice having you around again.” 

She didn’t know what to say. There had been a fight a few months ago when Kanaya moved into the caves, about whether Kanaya should go at all. ‘You did say that it'd be possible in the best case scenario,' she said. ‘This is about us, not about the mother grub!’ Rose said. When Kanaya went anyway, Rose threw a potted plant at her head. 

Was she supposed to be grateful that this offer was being made, or was she supposed to be defiant? In this new stage of their relationship, neither acquiescence nor mulishness pleased Rose. 

“Let’s talk about it when the prototype has been constructed,” she said. Not because she didn’t want to go back, but because she didn’t trust anything to watch over the grub long enough to leave. When Rose looked disappointed, Kanaya leaned in blindly, seeking heat. 

Eventually they were laughing on the fabricpile, Kanaya reaching for the pail, two inches too far, Rose moving her hips with a deliberate pace over her bulge. “What happened to your old endurance?” Rose said. 

“I have to sleep in this,” she shot back, hitting Rose on the shoulder to get her to rear up. Then she made a lunge for the pail, twisting so her stomach was against the pile. Rose fell off of her with a yelp. Then Rose leapt back on top, her full weight hot against Kanaya’s back and side. She reached up for a horn with one hand—Kanaya tilted her head back before Rose could get a grip, and the hand landed in her hair instead. The other trailed down Kanaya’s side, knuckles against the ribs, thumb along the stomach, fingers opening up on her hip, heading down. All the while she kissed Kanaya’s neck and shoulders, mouth hot on the chain of the gifted necklace. “Shit,” she mumbled. The bucket fell from her fingers. 

*** 

“Maybe I should stay here with you,” Rose said. “For the long-term.” 

Kanaya laughed, and saw too late it was the wrong thing to do. “Would you really want to?” she said, but Rose turned over on the pile and said nothing, even when Kanaya tried to goad her. Rose didn’t like traveling at night, so she stayed in the cave with Kanaya on the fabricpile. But it was clear that when she left, she’d stay gone for another two weeks. 

Fine, Kanaya thought, trying to ignore the sting. As she drifted off, she turned the hourglass over in her hand twice, and drifted off to sleep. 

When she woke, she reappeared on Aranea’s bed. The screens were up, but she could hear Aranea and some pirates on the other side. Aranea was saying, “Yes, yes, this one will do very nicely. I’ll expect him up in my room later tonight. Keep him in the brig until then, please. Bring in the next one.” 

Kanaya sat up in the bed and groaned. Her head felt cottony and far away. A second later, she heard Aranea say, “Actually, all of you out. I’ll inspect the rest of them later.” 

She heard Aranea’s footsteps click to her. A second later, Aranea opened up the screen. She was in full pirate get-up again, and utterly without any shame. 

“What were you doing back there?” Kanaya said, squinting at her. 

“Oh, you know,” Aranea said. “Choosing which of the—never mind! I was just about to have dinner. You’re the guest of honor.” 

“Neither of us need to eat,” Kanaya said, feeling moody and therefore contrarian. 

“It’s a gesture of welcome and hospitality!” Aranea said. “I figure that this will help us get over the little mess that was our introduction.” She extended her hand to Kanaya. After a beat, Kanaya took it, and got out of the bed. 

 

*** 

For dinner, Aranea summoned five trolls to stand discreetly behind a set of screens. She narrated the dinner to them, and the food appeared on the long table, shimmering with holographic uncertainty. The food was richer than anything Kanaya had seen in years, rich in color and smell. Nothing like what she ate in the caves, or what she had seen the others eating at the settlement. 

“It’s much more enjoyable ghost eating when you aren’t the one thinking it up,” Aranea said. “This whole ship and all of its treasures are the product of collaborative imagination! Each and every single one of us are contributing to the illusion.” 

Kanaya looked up from a grubpastry. “Why didn’t you imagine a steam engine?” 

“No! This is a one hundred percent eight-to-eight scale replica of Mindfang’s old ship.” The tips of Aranea’s teeth seemed to glint. “We can talk more after we eat.” 

It could have been the force of her wanting the food to be solid that made it almost so, more textured than the last ghost fare she had eaten. She chomped her way through stacks of meat, then stacks of grub, then stacks of troll organs. Someone had imagined endless goblets of blood wine for her, mostly blood and not so much with the wine. For dessert, it was candied ears, served on a bed of mashed liver paste. 

By the time she finished eating, she was almost full. After dinner, Aranea took her a corner of the room with long chairs, and gave her a cigar. They lay on the chairs and smoked while drinking blood brandy, this time more alcohol than blood. 

“Is Meenah on board?” Kanaya said, now pleasantly drowsy. Somehow she was only focused here, no overlap between her and the other world. The warmth was from the alcohol and the cigar, and she appreciated the way the warmth was self-generated. 

“I’ve already found Meenah,” Aranea said, her voice distant and faraway. “She started a little empire in the southern seas. Once I’ve found some of our other friends, I’m going to go meet her there.” 

“How do you even know they’re here?” 

“One of them must be out there. I found you, after all! In fact, I’ve been doing a survey of the mechanics of reemerging in the afterlife, administered by my pirates in port towns, and I have a man down below working on—” 

“A pirate doing paperwork?” she said, laughing in acrid clouds. 

“Anything’s possible with the right kind of motivation.” Aranea rolled over in her chair, legs shifting over one another. “I discovered talents in them that they never would have known they had! One of them has a real knack for organizing things by color. What do you do on the other side?” 

“What do I do?” The question seemed absurd to her, given what she _had_ been doing over the last few perigees. “I take care of the mother grub,” she said finally. “In the caves.” 

“By yourself? That seems lonely. I’m glad Aradia to gave you a way into the underworld.” 

Kanaya felt the cold jolt of Aranea inside her mind, rifling through the memories like they were encyclopedia pages—she shook her head, hard, trying to clear it and block it at the same time. “Stop that! Yes. Things are certainly eventful here. Moreso than they are on the other side. But, you see, the mother grub…” 

“Hmm.” Aranea puffed on her cigar. “Speaking as one Sylph to another, may I say something?” 

“It’s become evident that nothing will stop you from saying anything,” Kanaya muttered. 

“You have a fixation on saving the troll race,” Aranea said. “Which I might have at one point regarded as being appropriate and wholesome. But it’s becoming clear to me that the universe might not _want_ the trolls to come back. Look at the humans! How are they doing now?” 

“Perfectly fine, thank you.” 

“Well, from what I’ve seen while I was in your head, it seems doubtful that their population will ever be viable again, and technically they were the winners of the last game. All those strange creatures who inhabit the planet you’re on are the true inheritors of your new universe.” 

“I didn’t ask you to be in my head—”

“And, well, given the short lifespans of some of your surviving friends and the viability of your race, you should leave the caves and spend time with them while they’re still alive. If you’re having trouble accepting that, I could expedite your acceptance by—” 

“How would you know about the viability of our race?” Kanaya said, standing up. “You’re dead. You aren’t alive anymore. Life is not about having ‘fun.’ There are duties I must attend to. Such as the survival of the race you evidently do not care about anymore. Being dead has changed you.” 

“It has in some ways,” Aranea said. “But I’m still a god, just as much as you’re a rainbow drinker. My powers aren’t diminished by my death. If you don’t believe me, then go ask your Rose whether she sees any future for either of your races.” 

“Fine,” she said. “Wake me up.” 

“Fine!” Aranea said, her eyes glowing. “I will.” 

***

This time more like falling through ice than cooling water—Kanaya bolted awake in her fabricpile, her whole body freezing and all the joints in her body swelling as though she was a diver emerging deep from underwater. 

There was no one in the cave; the mother grub was still dozing; the spot on the fabricpile was still warm. Kanaya scrambled out of the pile, throwing her clothes on without much care. Her whole body pulsed with a frantic, bestial energy. Rose, Rose—she needed Rose. 

She could still see Rose, from far away, when she made it to the entrance of the cave. “Rose!” she shouted, and ran after her, through the barren, black valley of rocks and dirt, shouting Rose’s name whenever she had the breath to. Eventually Rose stopped and looked back, her eyes full of hope, posture curved forward, like a question. Kanaya stumbled when she got close, almost tripping. Rose caught her. One of her hands patted Kanaya on the back. 

“I need you—” Kanaya wheezed, and started again. “I need you to look into the future for me. A future. Any future. I need—”

“What?” Rose pushed Kanaya away. “Wait. I don’t mean to sound as though your questions aren’t worth asking, but are you saying you came chasing me all the way out here to ask me about the future?” 

“Yes,” Kanaya said, and had to stop to breathe again. Rose frowned. “It’s important,” she said. “I need—is there a future, any future, where I am successful in resurrecting the troll race?” 

“I don’t think I should answer that question,” Rose said, now breaking contact altogether. 

Kanaya grabbed Rose by the arms, and then let her go. She took a step away from Rose, brought her hands up to her mouth. Her exhaustion collapsed on top of her. She squatted down, elbows touching her knees, and tried to breathe. The sun was out today, dim red over the sky. “I was a fool to think I had a chance,” she said. “If I did, you would have told me. You would have encouraged me, instead of staring at me like I’m one of your many deceased cats.” 

“It’s not _im_ possible,” Rose said. “I told you before, that there is always the chance that it will—”

“How much of a chance?” Rose’s mouth opened, for a moment forming a number or a guess—then it closed again. Kanaya closed her eyes, and let her hands fall away from her mouth. She looked from one end of the pale horizon to the next. All she saw was ghost-blighted wasteland, everywhere. Then there was Rose, in her orange robes, with the yellow sun. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Sorry, Kanaya, it’s virtually hopeless? Your chances of success are minimal and beyond any of our abilities to help in a significant manner? The only way this is going to work is if there is one miracle after another, and given our present circumstances, the likelihood of us doing this is virtually nil?’” Rose folded her arms, tucked her elbows tight against her body. “It would’ve killed you.” 

“So you would have rather had me down in those caves,” she said, angry and pointlessly cruel. “Waiting until the mother grub died, so you could swoop in and say ‘I told you so?’” 

“I never would have said that,” Rose said. “I never wanted you to fail. The chances are small, but we’ve done it before. I was always trying to help—getting Jade to build those robots, letting you go down there, asking Aradia to lend you her ghosts… But I wanted you, too, Kanaya, I did…” 

She wasn’t listening anymore. The hole in her gut was expanding, wider, larger, the size of the cave, the size of the hopes for her race, blasted away by hard light. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to shiver. But since dying, she rarely felt cold. 

Rose was still talking. “I wanted everything, to have you nearby and John and Jade and everyone else. But I can see now that I can’t have everything all at once. When I asked you if I could stay, I meant it. I’d do it if it meant not losing you. Would you let me? Kanaya?” 

She went to Kanaya and took her hands and held them. But her voice was passing, passing away.


	3. Chapter 3

She went back to the settlement with Rose, and immediately went to hide in Karkat’s hive. She couldn’t deal with Rose and her earnest attempts at helping her; the thought of percentages and probabilities made her queasy. For a moment she thought wildly to kill the grub herself.

“Are you crazy?” Karkat barked at her. “The chances were low to begin with, but if you do that, then she’s never going to do anything! What did Rose say?” 

“She said that even under the best circumstances, there is a less than point six percent that the troll race will survive past the initial three generations.” 

“Well! Three generations. That’s not bad. Anyway, since when has Rose been right about anything? Besides all the time. Shit.” He looked at her, eyes wide and yellow as flickering lamps. She had the sudden vision of him old and infirm, long before any of the rest of them, all while she continued to wither away her life in the caverns, tending to the grubs. Karkat had never been able to let go of the pomp and glory of the Alternian Empire; but he cared, nearly more than anything, about his friends first. She lowered her head, far enough so her horns were nearly pointed to the floor. He rubbed her head with the heel of his palm, running his fingers through her hair every now and then. They had talked a few times, haltingly, about establishing a pale quadrant; but then she went into the caves. “Isn’t there something you can do?” 

“Revive the entirety of our doomed and demolished universe to find a place for her where the viability of our race is more than a comedic ‘what if?’”

He flicked her horn with a finger and grimaced. “Don’t be a smartass.”

*** 

She fell asleep in the too-warm slime of Karkat’s extra recuperacoon, and turned the hourglass around her neck. She fell through the cold, nighttime sea, and emerged again on Aranea’s pirate’s ship. She was on the other side of the screens now, resting in a chair near the doors. She could hear the sound of Aranea carousing with another troll on the bed. 

“Yes, yes,” Aranea was saying, sounding very drunk. “Here, drink more!” 

Kanaya was immediately disapproving. It seemed unfair that she could still have fun when things in the world of the living were doomed to a meandering existence ending in total futility. She marched up to the screen and pulled it open. There on the bed, each member still mostly dressed, was Aranea with two pirates and a single, terrified floor scrubber. 

“You’re back!” Aranea said. She held up a bottle. Her shirt was unbuttoned to the solar plexus, and, in raising her arm, the shirt flopped open and exposed her left breast. “Whoops.” 

“Yes, ‘whoops,’” Kanaya said. She gave the pirates a glare, but took pity on the cleaning boy. She settled for ignoring him. “Do you intend to have a conversation with them still in the room?” 

“Oh, I can make it so they won’t remember anything. In fact, if I stop mind controlling them, they’ll fall unconscious right now.” 

“You’re—” Kanaya started, and then shook her head to keep herself from getting off-track. “I need to know if there is some way that you can fix this.” 

“This? You mean your… situation?” 

“Yes, my situation. That is exactly what I want fixed.” 

Aranea looked down at her companions in bed, and, growing serious, said, “Come here.” And then: “Roll up your shirt.” 

“What?” Kanaya said, even as she was doing it. Aranea put her hand on her stomach, right over the hole. She jumped away, shoving her shirt hem past her hips. “I was talking about the possible total extinction of our race!” 

“Right! I knew that.” Aranea cleared her throat, and patted the cleaning boy on the back. The cleaning boy rolled out of the bed and began scrubbing the floors. Another ‘ahem’ and the cleaning boy scrubbed his way out of the room. The two pirates collected two bottles each and hobbled out of the room. Aranea buttoned up her shirt, fingers moving with a drunken clumsiness. “So… what’s the problem?” 

“You are train wreck of debauchery and frivolity,” she said, disgusted. 

“Thank you,” Aranea said modestly. “I put a lot of effort into getting to this point. It’s not as easy as it sounds—I didn’t want to go the full Mindfang and murder everyone. I just wanted to raid some towns on alternating Tuesday and Thursdays, capture some people, party with them, maybe find my friends—” When Kanaya looked no happier, she cleared her throat and said, “Anyway, I don’t think I can be of much help to you. Unless you still want that minor inconvenience fixed?” 

She folded her arms across her stomach. “So you’d let us die off?” 

“We’re both already dead, in a manner of speaking. The extinction of our race isn’t a loss for us anymore. Although there are fascinating arguments you could make for the amount of dead we are, relatively speaking. Are you sure you don’t want something done about your hole?” 

“Even if you won’t help me, there must be someone who can,” Kanaya said, speaking half to herself. With a horrible jolt, she realized who she needed to contact. 

Aranea seemed to, as well. “Vriska?” she said. The word was expelled from her mouth with such surprise that Kanaya felt herself become uncertain in response. She puffed her cheeks, then said, “No, I understand. Thieves have always been a go-getting class compared to the Sylphs. Fine! Go to her. She’s a mover and shaker. You’ll like her brand of wreckage more than mine. It’s what you’re used to in your universe. Maybe I should have been more forceful… The Mindfang in your world had a slave, you know.” 

Her gaze was dense as fog in the morning. Kanaya said slowly, “What are you implying?” 

“Nothing,” she said, with a shrug. Her shirt was nearly sheer, and Kanaya could see her shoulders lifting up through the sleeves like twin tectonic plates. “Nothing at all.” 

*** 

They weren’t far from the next port, though whether this was Aranea’s imaginative intervention or just coincidental, Kanaya didn’t know. The pirates set her off in a small blue boat, and pointed her to the shore. 

“How am I supposed to get there?” Kanaya said. “Blow an imaginary wind? Conjure a motor?” Aranea handed her a paddle. “Ah.” 

“You can still come with us,” Aranea said. “There’s no need to go to Vriska. Be a pirate!” 

“I thought you and Vriska got along.” 

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “She stole a whole _island_ from me.” 

It took hours, but she made it, drawn in by the tides. The port was a city, with buildings tall enough that, had there been a sun, it would have been blocked for hours by its black towers. At the center of the city was a spire that glowed with a faint white light; but no one seemed to pay it any mind, and so Kanaya, too, paid it no mind. She avoided it and walked through the outer rim of the city, neighborhoods where there were no ghosts, only the eerie haze of determined dissolution. She was careful to avoid breathing if she couldn’t help it, lest she end up inhaling someone’s elbow or femur. 

She went through this cloud until, at last, tiring and tired, she emerged in a world of red lights and narrow houses. Ghosts, on guard, watched her. She walked among them, aware that they were all watching—with their eyes blanked, it was difficult to tell if Vriska was watching her, through the eyes of some unsuspecting soul. 

She was approaching a bridge out of the city when a troll, an adult with a sign like a broken mast, lurched over to her. When he spoke, it was like he was clearing his throat. “The boss wants to see you.” 

“I wish you had introduced yourself as ‘the booooooooss.’” 

“Shut up!” the troll snapped, voice pitching up. “Just get over here.” 

*** 

She didn’t know what she expected. She expected a mess, and arrived at a ship that had apparently sailed into a building. She expected a whole throng of mind controlled followers, but the adult who escorted her to the ship departed once the ship was in sight, and when she climbed up to the ship’s entrance, she saw, of all people, Aradia. 

“Hi!” she said. Even down here, she gave off fairy dust. “I was waiting for you. You’ve left the cave.” 

“Yes,” Kanaya said. She didn’t want to talk to Aradia now. It had been—a week, since Aradia gave her the hourglass, and since then, everything had gotten measurably worse. “Where’s Vriska?” 

“In there. I was looking for you, you know.” 

“Yes. In the caves.” 

“No. Here. In this world. I’m glad you got off of Aranea’s pirate ship. Every time I tried to go there, she’d mind control me into falling asleep in the water. My hair was briny for days.” 

Kanaya remembered the dull trickle of water in her head, dripping like a leaky roof. “And now you’re here,” she said. 

Aradia’s smile glittered. “And now I’m here! I knew you’d come looking for Vriska eventually. So how’s the underworld been? Enjoying your pirate adventures?”

“Did you know?” Kanaya said. “About the mother grub. The viability of our race.” 

“No. What do I know? Is this a future thing? There are so many possibilities and timelines.” After a moment, she said, “Well, we’re not in a doomed timeline, so no matter what happens, we’re stuck with it. We could’ve been doomed from the start. Ooh, I love saying that.” She stepped around Aradia, stepping over a collapsed beam, and then almost immediately after, a hole in the floor. But as she went, Aradia called after her, cheeky, “Don’t forget to give her a kiss.” 

There would be no kissing involved in this. Kanaya pushed forward, leaving Aradia behind. Ahead was the captain’s cabin, lit with the warm, yellow glow of lanterns. The door was closed, but unlocked. When she pushed it open, Vriska was flat out on a sofa with gold coins glued onto every inch of it. Her hair, black and tangled, swept around her head and down her back. 

“That seems uncomfortable,” Kanaya said, folding her arms. 

“Whatever,” Vriska said, sitting up. The sleeves of her denim jacket were pushed up to the elbows, and the coins had left repeating indents on her skin. “About time you got here! … Wait a second. Why aren’t you dead?” 

“Aradia said I was ‘dead enough.’ Never mind that. I need your help.”

“Wow. Not even waiting for small talk? The ‘what’s up! How’ve you been doing? What cool heroics have you been up to?’ part of moirallegiance?” 

“We can’t be moirails if you’re dead.” 

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” Vriska bounced on the couch, and patted the seat next to her. When Kanaya settled next to her, and the couch sagged with her weight; far more heavily, she realized, than it was doing for Vriska. Vriska leaned forward. “Give me a kiss.” 

“You’re kidding me.”

“Haha, well, you don’t _have_ to. I mean, it’s not like you’re my traitorous ex-moirail or anything. If thinking about it makes your stomach get all queasy, I understand. I can live with it! Even though I’m dead.” Vriska shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. It reeked of self-pity. Kanaya sighed, and kissed her cheeks. Vriska was still and cold against her mouth. She, for some reason, closed her eyes. “See?” Vriska said, after Kanaya had pulled back and wiped her mouth against the back of her fingers. “Was that so hard! Now what do you want.” 

“You’re deplorable,” said Kanaya. She looked around the cabin. There was a bed, also covered with coins and jewels. It was the worst thing that had ever bedazzled her eyes. Clothes were bunched on the platinum blankets. Clothes were tossed on the floor. Clothes were everywhere. The fairy dress she had made for Vriska, sweeps and sweeps ago, was tossed over an open window. Bitterness welled up in the back of her throat. “I need luck. Long-lasting luck.” 

“Hmm,” she said, shifting her legs. “So you want me to give you all my luck.” 

“Or someone else’s,” Kanaya suggested. 

“I can arrange for that. But I’m all out of luck myself right now, if you know what I mean! Look at these dunky threads I’m wearing.” 

“Then think of new ones.” 

“Poof,” Vriska said, holding up her hand; and instantly her clothes changed. A bright orange jumpsuit, striped with blue and red. She arched her back on the couch. “Okay, so the threads don’t matter. But it’s true! I’m all out of luck. There ain’t no luck to be found anywhere here. You know why? All these suckers are dead!” 

“Still bitter about that?” Kanaya said, not meaning to mock. 

Vriska kicked her. “Yeah, well! I’ve made my peace with that. But being dead sucks. It’s so boring out here! No victories or winning or anything.” 

“Aranea said you stole an island from her. And Meenah has a kingdom.” 

“I didn’t steal an island from her. I _liberated_ it. I liberated everyone on that island from her dumbass mind control farm. I’m a fucking hero.” She waved her arms, uselessly, at the squalor. “Not that you can tell. But hey, I’m reformed. Not all of us can have a ship full of lackeys. Some of us have to make do with what we can find.” She stretched her back, extended her leg, so her heel rested on Kanaya’s thigh. Kanaya shoved the leg off. A second leg came up. Kanaya tried to push her, but no matter what she did, another leg kept coming up to pin her down. She had grown since Kanaya had last seen her, longer in the face, with lengthier limbs. “I can probably help you. We can make a deal!” 

She gazed at Vriska for a while, to relearn her face, adjust to the scrape of her voice scratching at her eardrums. She said, “Any deal you make will be corrupt.”

“Maybe. But come on. You want a whoooooooole lot of luck. I just want,” Vriska said, opening her hands, “your body. What do you need all that luck for, anyway? I bet it’s for something dumb and altruistic. Is it for gorkdork?” 

“This is for me,” she snapped. “This is about the future of our race.” 

“Haha. That’s a dumb reason.” Vriska extended her legs even further. She scooted forward, so the back of her thighs were against Kanaya’s knees. “What do you think about my jumpsuit?” 

“What do you need my body for?” she said. 

This time Vriska leaned forward, legs folding up in front of her. “You know. A bit of mind control. Me hanging out in your body so I can suck up some luck for you. Give all the luck to you so you can do that thing where you do your duty or whatever and feel bad about it. What do you say?” 

What was there to say, besides yes? No, I would rather give up here, and now--no, I'll call back in ten sweeps, when we are closer to extinction. There was only ever yes. 


	4. Chapter 4

There was an obscure and likely unnecessary ritual Vriska insisted on before Kanaya returned to the other world. It involved burning effigies, some of Vriska, and many of Kanaya. In the orange light of the fire, Vriska said, tentatively, “How’s John? What about Terezi?” 

“They’re both doing well,” Kanaya said. “John is with child.” 

“What!” 

“I’m joking,” Kanaya said. She had been talking about that strange lizard thing and meant nothing else than that, but Vriska’s scowl gripped her whole face too tight to be let go. Awkwardly, she said, “So, have you seen any of our other friends here?” 

“Nope. I see Aranea, but we’re rivals. I’m Spiderman, she’s the Joker. We’re sworn to fight each other to the death or something. I go around cleaning up her messes!” Vriska flicked some hair away from her face. “See? Dead people can change. We aren’t just stuck in the morass of our past mistakes and personality flaws.” 

The earnest declaration itched at something she vaguely remembered hearing before. “Did Aradia tell you that?” 

“No,” Vriska said. “Screw you. Why? How’s she doing? When did you see her?”

“Never mind,” Kanaya said quickly.

But Vriska honed in on the necklace and the hourglass. She reached over to Kanaya and yanked at the chain. “So you’ve been spending time with the time fairy! That’s cool. I don’t resent that. I mean, it’s not like Aradia hasn’t bothered to visit me at all for these last few whatevers. And we were getting to be friends before all this happened.” 

“Really?” 

“Shut up,” Vriska said, and tugged at the chain again. “So, what quadrant?” 

“None,” Kanaya said. “And it’s none of your business, either.” 

“Can’t a dead girl be interested in what her ex-moirail is up to?” She poked at the burning effigies. The heat intensified, as though Vriska had forgotten that the primary property of fire was not just its light, but also its heat. That was probably what it was: Vriska’s idle forgetfulness of fire as something other than the destructive glorification of her aspect. She gave Vriska another shove. “What was that for!” 

“You deserved it,” she said, and looped her arms around her knees. When Vriska shoved her back, she toppled over onto the wooden floors. “What is the purpose of this?” 

“Camaraderie. And to give me something of yours that’ll let me hitch a ride with you. Cutting a bit of you out and gluing it onto me. Lock and key.” 

“What am I giving you?” she said, her wariness drawing higher. 

In response, Vriska shrugged, and tossed another effigy into the flames. 

***

All it took for the actual ritual was for Vriska to stick herself into Kanaya’s head, slyly intrusive, like a piece of paper slipped under a fingernail than some roaring force. Vriska’s dream body kept growing transparent, sometimes at the knees or the neck. Even though Kanaya didn’t want to, Vriska kept steering her eyes to the ghost body. 

“Do you think I should wear more spandex?” she said. 

“Just go to sleep,” Kanaya said, before realizing how dumb conversations sounded, when they came from the same voice. 

But sleep was hard to achieve, with Vriska rattling around in her head, trying to convince her to let her in deeper, to thumb through memories. Then she began to complain that Kanaya was being cold, that she ought to be kinder. Then came the sulky silence, though it was more like brief five minute pauses between bragging monologues. Finally, Vriska said, “Fine! I’m going to be professional about this, even if you aren’t.” 

_All you’ve been doing,_ Kanaya thought—but Vriska said, “Bluh bluh!” and shut her out. Vriska fingered the chain around her neck. Kanaya kept herself quiet and still, so to not give Vriska ideas. But the silence was damning, too; she could feel her mouth twitching, not in a smile or frown, but straight across in thought. 

*** 

… She was barely aware of falling asleep, but she did recognize the feeling of waking up, the heavy grogginess followed by a seizing panic as she tried to move her head, lift her eyes, anything, and felt nothing in response. There was a moment, and then Vriska opened her eyes, flexed a hand, blinked at the green slime in the recuperacoon. 

“Blugh,” Vriska said. “I thought you said you were in a cave.” 

_I’m visiting Karkat._ She tried to work her own mouth, but Vriska was already lurching her body out of the recuperacoon, dripping slime everywhere. To her fury, Vriska didn’t even bother showering, just wiped herself down with a towel, tossed the towel on top of the recuperacoon, and then wiggled into a nearby dress. _You’re putting it on backwards!_

Vriska, with her iron grip, ignored her and moved on, plodding through the hive barefoot. Her eyes flitted about the halls, then the room, not lingering on anything for too long. “God, this place is tiny. I mean, I saw Tavros’ hive a bunch of times, but this is practically a hole in the ground. And the furniture! Geeze. Did you carve it yourself or something? This is some pretty sad stuff. How do I get out of here? I want to find Terezi.” 

_You have a mission here,_ Kanaya said. 

“Well, if I’m here, why can’t I look around? Haha! Did Karkat make that? That’s the shittiest looking pot I’ve ever seen.” 

_This isn’t what you promised me,_ she said, growing angry. 

“I’ll get you what you want. Geeze. Don’t get your rumble spheres worked up in an illegal rumble party here.” By some miracle, Vriska found the door and made her way to the main compound. She looked around, then laughed when she saw a hideous teal house. “There she is. I’m going to visit her.” 

She didn’t say much more than that, just, in her jerky way, ambulated over to the hive and began pounding on the door. It was barely even evening. The sun was tipping into the horizon, rusting the copper-black sky. Next door, Dave popped open a window and said, “Way to wake the dead over here. But it’s all cool, nothing wrong with being encouraged to keep responsible hours like a responsible adult. No chuffed jimmies rustled here.” 

Vriska squinted at him. “God,” she said. “You humans look retarded.”

“What,” Dave said. “Is this because I’m not wearing a dress. You just not cool with branching leg gear, Kan?” 

“Ugh,” Vriska said, and returned to hitting the door. After a moment, the door popped open. 

Terezi squinted out at her—at them. Terezi, after getting her vision back, often seemed to have an expression of constant uneasiness and strain. Sleepiness never improved this impression. Genuine bewilderment mixing with apparent, and magnifying both. “What?” Terezi said. 

For a moment, all Kanaya felt from Vriska was a hollowed shock, the heavy weight of tongue, and a revulsion of the present, the way it refused to link sensibly with the past. Then Vriska said, “Hey!” 

“I heard you were here,” Terezi said, leaning against a wall. It was a habit of hers to prop herself against something, now that she no longer needed the cane. “I was with Rose last night!” 

“Oh yeah?” Vriska said, curious—both by the statement, and by Kanaya’s moment of swelling jealousy. “Had a good time?”

Terezi laughed, but weirdly. “So what is it?” she said. “Came up with a hot new way to save our species? Need an answer encoded in legalese?” 

“Actually,” Vriska said, “I just wanted to hang out. Do whatever it is we do. What do we do, knit stuff?” 

“What’s wrong with you?” 

“Nothing. Fuck you.” Vriska ran her tongue over her teeth, then said, “I want a drink.” 

Kanaya protested against this—she wasn’t hungry, there was no way this couldn’t end in disaster—but Terezi said, “Okay,” and stepped out of the doorway to head inside. Vriska, hungry, followed, flickering the glow of her skin to watch the shadows jump on the walls. Terezi turned her head back and said, “Stop that.” 

“Sorry,” Vriska said. “It’s a hunger thing, you know!” 

Terezi took them to the kitchen and hacked apart some meat from some of those strange bovine Jade was breeding, and poured them some orange juice. They ate in silence; or rather, Terezi ate, and Vriska eyed the meat with suspicion and disgust. But towards Terezi, Vriska only felt—what was it? Tenderness? Anger, resentment—longing, Kanaya realized, for a bygone day. By the time Terezi finished swigging the juice, Vriska was bouncing and twitching in the seat, minute fiddling magnified into bizarre jerking spasms by the lack of fine control over the body. 

“Rose really did a number on you, didn’t she,” Terezi said, sympathy mingled with suspicion. 

“Just give me your neck already!” 

“This isn’t a concupiscent juice bar, peppermint!” Terezi said, and stuck out her arm instead. 

“Fine,” Vriska said, and bent down. But being new to the technical aspects of drinking, it took a few bites before her teeth got into the vein. And with no sense of pressure or speed, Terezi sometimes would hit her over the head or on the shoulder, and blood dropped out of the wound and onto the table. After a few minutes, Vriska seemed to acquire a semblance of aptitude. The blood flowed smoothly out of the vein and into her mouth. She would have kept going, if her stomach hadn’t protested. She withdrew, drawing a hand across her mouth to get rid of the excess blood. 

“Are you drunk?” Terezi said, drawing closer and sniffing. “Is that why you’ve come pounding on my door? Kanaya, I’m hurt. I thought we had a real friendship, one based on unwanted and prolonged social contact, and your continued desire to murder or quadrant my exes.” 

“What?” Vriska said. “I’ve been doing what?” When Terezi only looked back with a smirk, she said, angry, “I need to go.” 

“I told you staying too long in that cave was going to do weird things to your pan,” Terezi shouted after her—at Vriska’s fleeing body, in the inside-out dress. 

*** 

_You’re doing nothing but making trouble,_ Kanaya complained as Vriska crashed through the agricultural compound. 

“Shut up,” Vriska said. “What’s the thing you need good luck for?” 

_The cave. The mother grub. Her eggsack._

“Uh-huh,” Vriska said. She let Kanaya point her the path, but she insisted on walking there herself. Kanaya, by that point, was ready to mutiny—she’d rather stay at the settlement for a while longer—but Vriska seemed determined to stomp out her anger on the road. 

“You know, I was planning on keeping your body,” Vriska said. “Just keeping it for myself and having a big party while you thrash around inside your head. I’d let you come out every now and then, because I’m so magnanimous. But that was my plan. I would’ve taken over this whole planet. I would’ve been the chief capitalist oppressor of this whole society. But it all sucks. Being alive sucks. Being dead sucks!” She stopped to kick a tree. “Argh! My toe!” 

_Of course you were planning on something,_ Kanaya said, and made sure to impress upon Vriska that if she could, she would be rolling her eyes right now. _You’re never happy unless you are actively conspiring to make everyone around you miserable._

“Oh, shut up,” Vriska said. “It would’ve been my grand revenge for you coming to visit me. Where the fuck are the pockets in this thing?” 

Kanaya chose to remain silent, and let Vriska march the rest of the way to the cave in silence. By the time they arrived, Vriska’s sourness had morphed into a full-on rage. She snarled at the ghosts and stormed down into the mother grub’s chamber. There she stared at the ugly grub and said, “So this is what you want to save? Really? Fine. Whatever! Like I care.” She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. The glow of her skin became incandescent; Kanaya, in the back of her own head, felt an overwhelming certainty flood her, total confidence and then more. The ability to change the universe, if she wanted it hard enough. 

Around them, the ghosts screamed in pain or terror. Vriska, sweating with the effort, didn’t pay them any mind, only kept working, tapping the veins of fortune until the two of them were vibrating with the force of it, the draw, the power. Distantly Kanaya was aware of crops going to failure, fires catching on chance—she grasped towards Vriska, not to make her stop, but to make her go, go, faster. 

When they woke up a few hours later, Kanaya in the cave and Vriska on the boat, each would understand that they had been hit on the back of the head with a brick. But since they had yet to reach that point, all they were aware of was a black wave smashing into them from behind. 

*** 

When Kanaya woke up, she was first aware of the mother grub wailing, and the apparent galaxy of ghosts who had come to clump together in the cave’s narrow passages. They were all making their angry ‘whoooooo’s. She groaned, and the first thing she was aware of was the lack, the absence of Vriska. She expected it to be a relief; but instead it was cold, a frost that started inside her and worked its way out to her clumsy fingers. She was flat out on the floor of the cave, and was in fact face down in a puddle. But since she didn’t need to breathe, this was less of a problem than it might have been for some people.

“Hi,” Aradia said from above. Kanaya groaned and tried to roll over. All she felt was the steady pressure of a concussion. Aradia propped her into a sitting position. Then she said, “I should have hit you harder.” 

“What,” Kanaya said. “What happened? Did it work?” 

“No! Of course not.” Aradia put a hand on her hip, then crossed her arms instead. “Do you know that you nearly brought about the extinction of all life on the planet by way of a giant meteor crashing into the surface? Or that you could have started a nuclear meltdown at Jade and Roxy’s plant?” 

“My head hurts,” she said. But she stood up gingerly and knelt by the mother grub. Loud, good. All limbs intact. When she tried to pat it, the grub reached for a finger and tried to bite. 

“I don’t think you have anything in there, so I don’t see why it hurts,” Aradia said. “What were you thinking? When I gave you the boat, I thought you’d use it to, you know. Have fun. Weave things. Not let Vriska possess you and do whatever you were trying to do!” 

“What did you do to Vriska?” 

“I sent her back. And punched her a few times.” 

“She deserved it,” Kanaya said, yanking her dress’ zipper out of range of the grub’s mouth. She stared down at the grub, hideous and blobular, doomed to die miserably, one failed clutch after another—or to die in a freak fungal infection, or to die, skewered by the natives… It was too awful to think about for much longer. She gave the grub a poke, and then searched for a piece of not too rotten meat to shove into its maw. Aradia was staring at her in disbelief, still. “Well, what do you want me to say?” she said, with a child’s sulkiness. “That I wanted the apocalypse?” 

“Even that would make more sense than what you did.” 

Kanaya stared down at the mother grub. Unexpectedly, tears came up to her eyes. Her lusus had been a mother grub, virginal and full of munificence. And there had been so many hopes! The tears made the mother grub recoil and crawl away from her. Kanaya sniffled. 

The worst part about death, she had found, was the isolation, the solitude, the nagging, perpetual sense of dissatisfaction—but now she couldn’t tell the distinction between her waking life and the dead dreams. What was she supposed to do with this lumpy grub, the copy of her mother she had wanted for so long—not destined to fulfill any of her intended duties, to live her life in happiness, one clutch after another, tended by a loyal child for all of her days? 

Soon she was crying with her thumb and index fingers pressed against her closed eyes, breath held to suppress any sobs. 

Aradia put a hand on her shoulder. “There, there,” she said—there was no there, only the rotted abscess where the ‘there’ had once been. Life, in itself, was not enough, not the flowers, not the flaming gaseous spheres in the sky, not every piece of stolen fortune—all of this not enough. 

At last, she returned back to herself, no longer so sodden with tears or sobbing. The ghosts were gone. It was just her and Aradia and the mother grub in the cavern. Kanaya, still sniffling, searched for a handkerchief.

“Here,” Aradia said, offering one to her. It was one of Kanaya’s, from before Sgrub. Kanaya didn’t question it. “So what are you going to do now?” 

“I don’t know,” Kanaya said, her voice scratchy and nose congested. She was irritated by this, and a little embarrassed. “I don’t intend on abandoning the mother grub.” 

“Of course not,” Aradia said, awkwardly sympathetic as she gave Kanaya another back pat. 

“I must at least have her come out of the cocoon,” she said, to herself. “To get her out of here. And then we can begin the process.” At this, she had to blow her nose vehemently to cover up her tearing. 

“That sounds like a plan,” she said. “Although I’ve been thinking about how nice it’d be, to have someone to be my assistant psychopomp. Ever since Sollux passed onto the other world. Something for you to do, now that you've had a taste of the underworld?” 

Kanaya stared at her, her nose full of snot and eyes still prone to watering when she turned her head. 

“Haha!” Aradia said. Then, her smile long, she kissed Kanaya twice, on each cheek. “Call me when you're ready,” she said. She gathered up the ghosts, tucking them away in the space between her wings, in the air between the curls of her hair, and flitted up and out of the cave. She left clouds of brilliant golden dust in her wake—rising, Kanaya lifted her head to face the remnants of the day.


End file.
